Swampwater Debutante

For years I’ve had this grandiose plan – if I’m still single at 38, I’ll go to a fertility clinic and do IVF.

It’s been a sort of singular goal of mine for as long as I can remember. Children. I want them.

Don’t I?

Forgive me for TMI, but I’ve been celibate for two years. I’ve had the odd date but no chance at all at a relationship. This is the longest I’ve been alone since I started dating. I suppose if I really wanted to, I COULD go out and rectify that. God knows my forays into OKCupid have proven that there are men who want to get into my pants.

But. They’re men who want to get into ANYONE’S pants, and that’s not what I want. In fact, I haven’t met anyone at all whose pants *I* want to get into in return. And then there’s the inevitable horrible drama, which I am so very over given that my last boyfriend fostered selfish, painful drama like people eat toast for breakfast. So, I am alone.

And somehow I’ve become increasingly all right with it. My friends have gone on, since the last time I visited this subject in any depth, to have more children. And the children are adorable. But they scream shrilly and leak fluids and they break things and LAUGH about it. Which I am increasingly unable to cope well with.

I’ve managed to organize a general tranquility in my life. My apartment is utterly mine. I cook a lot and keep things tidy most of the time. I don’t have to ask someone else’s opinion on what I cook, watch, listen to, or bring in. I don’t have to worry about what might be destroyed or who might be hurt.

That plus the lack of selfish asshole drama and being able to go wherever I like without having to either make children arrangements or keep checking in with someone…it’s sort of liberating. And the more time trails by and my status quo doesn’t change, the more settled and happier I am with it.

In fact I occasionally think it would be extremely annoying if something were to happen that does change all that I have now.

But then I’m a little pissed that I haven’t been given any choice about it. It is how it is despite my best efforts, and while I may be lucky as hell in the eyes of my married friends, I still resent it. It’s less luck, I say, than a circumstance foisted upon me that I have learned to appreciate.

So part of me IS happy to be, I guess, free and independent. But there’s still a part of me that’s angry about it. And therefore I can’t completely give up on it.

Yet sometimes I wonder if I hold on to that old wish because I think I should. I’m supposed to want to have a husband and kids. Aren’t I? I shouldn’t be happy being a touchy spinster. Should I?

I swing between gratitude and resentment for my life, happy with my circumstance but unable to let completely go of the idea that maybe one day, a partner and kids would be nice.

I have SO MUCH I want to do that is contingent on how things are now. Five years between now and my self imposed deadline. I don’t know whether to hope that something interrupts the plan or pray that it doesn’t.